Ben Ben Noodles

Ingredients

• Mushrooms

  White, raw

  250g

• Scallions

  Spring onions or scallions (includes tops and bulb), raw

  2 medium or 30g

• Pam’s Sliced Gherkins

  Sliced Gherkins

  40g

• Soy sauce

  Regular sodium, Shoyu

  55g

• Shao Hsing Rice Cooking Wine

  SSC International, Inc.

  ⅛ cup or 10g

• Sesame butter

  Seeds, tahini, type of kernels unspecified

  30g

• Peppercorn, Szechuan

  Lorissa's Kitchen

  6g

• Chinkiang Vinegar

  Walong

  ½ Tbsp or 8g

• Chili Oil

  Lee Kum Kee

  ½ tbsp or 50g

• Organic Black Bean Spaghetti

  Explore Cuisine

  150g

Directions

1. Blitz the mushrooms in a food processor to lentil-size pieces – be careful they don’t turn to soup.
2. Put the peppercorns in a dry frying pan on a low heat and toast until fragrant – about four minutes, but be vigilant because they burn easily – then remove and grind in the pestle and mortar.
3. In the same pan, fry the chopped mushrooms, pressing them into a single layer to maximise contact with the pan, for eight to 10 minutes, until dark brown and beginning to crisp up.
4. Add the chopped gherkins, sliced spring onions and the ground Sichuan pepper, fry for two minutes, then add the Shaoxing wine and 2t of the soy sauce, and cook for two minutes more, until dry and crunchy.
5. Mix all the sauce ingredients in a small bowl: tahini, Chinkiang vinegar, 3T of the soy sauce and chilli oil. It will look a little split at first, but just keep mixing until it comes together.
6. Cook the noodles in boiling water according to the packet instructions, stirring to separate them. Just before the noodles are done, remove a mugful of the cooking water, then drain and put the noodles in the pan with the mushrooms. Mix in the sauce, and the reserved cooking water, tablespoon by tablespoon (I needed six), until the noodles are nice and saucy.